The Unbounded
by CanaanAlphardForever
Summary: During a Territory Battle for the control of Shatter Bay's districts, a mysterious racer crashes the party, wins the race and leaves. In the midths of all of this chaos, Nagase Kousoku has run away to Shatter Bay to live her dream of racing among the Unbounded. Can she accomplish her dream even when someone has turned Shatter Bay upside down? (Includes action and a lesbian romance)


Author's Note: Hello ^^ so, I just need to mention a few things before you can read to see if this story is worth your time or not. I just recently got into Ridge Racer Unbounded, and I haven't played any of the other games in the series, so I don't know about the cities, plots or characters of the other games. I searched but I could only find one character from Unbounded, which is Shindo Kara, and even then I don't really know her looks or personality. So, most of the events and characters in this story will be created by me. After playing the game I got this brilliant idea and it wouldn't leave me alone, so I have decided to go with it and write this. I'm no car or race expert, so forgive me if I reference things wrong. Google will be my trusty tool here, lol. Also, I intend to include a lesbian romance in this story, so if that bugs you then don't even waste your time in reading, but if that's alright with you then do go on and read ^^ only like 4 people will probably end up reading this, so I'll probably get no reviews -_- but I hope that you'll enjoy this anyway. I plan to write this more for myself than anything, so why not share it in the process? Thank you for reading, if you do make it to the end.

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_This is Shatter Bay; grand, magnificent, cold. It's the city of many faces; from the grave highways that cast their shadows on the streets below, to the quiet outskirts where the rest of society is left to linger as outcasts. It triumphs above all. There are many of us that strive to destroy the hollow foundations this city was built on._

_We are the Unbounded. We are lawless. The streets are ours. This is our city, and we thirst for the thrill of the ride and the smell of gasoline. _

_Shatter Bay can be yours too, if you have what it takes to rise in rank within the Unbounded. You'll starts from the bottom and work your way up, dominating district by district, and after Shatter Bay, the world. We can offer you an experience you won't easily forget. _

_Remember my name, Shindo Kara. You are one of us now. Drive._

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Prologue:

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I blinked my eyes open and stared up at the grey ceiling. Something had woken me up from a deep sleep, and when I turned my head to the side I noticed my laptop was open and resting on the pillow beside my head. The luminous light sent a jolt through my eyes for a moment, but then my eyes adjusted and I focused to see the screen.

It was replaying a video I had been watching, alongside an article attached to the side that I had forgotten on, and I apparently had fallen asleep before I had even finished reading. How did the laptop get on my pillow though?

My bedroom door cracked open, spilling orange light into the darkness of my abode, and a familiar head poked around the edge. "Kou, are you still awake?" she asked softly.

"Yeah," I sat up with a grunt and rubbed a hand over my face.

My name is Nagase Kousoku. My name 'Kousoku' is written with the kanji for "speed". Yes, my mother was completely sober when she had named me eighteen years ago. Though it's weird, I actually really like my name. It's perfect for me since I love racing.

Since I was able to talk and walk I had been watching races on TV, playing with my toy cars and eventually when I was in my early teens I upgraded to playing racing video games. That never seemed to satisfy me though, because racing on a screen with a controller is totally different to actually being in the car and on the road, hands on the wheel that is vibrating in synch with the wheels skidding over tar and dirt. Turning a car with the simple movement of a thumb on an analogue stick is completely different to using both hands to grip the steering wheel and turn it to steer the car in a different direction. I really want to race for real, to win and get the pride and the glory that comes with it. There's also that wonderful adrenalin that racing gives as well.

"What's this?" She had waddled over to my bed and peeked over at my laptop screen before I could close it.

I sighed softly and turned to her. "It's just the usual, Ai." I answered and swung my long legs over the edge of my bed. I'm really tall at 6 feet 2 inches. Ai says that I get it from my father, but I wouldn't really know because he died in a terrible accident a few months before I was born. Ironically, 2 months after my birth my mother met the same fate. They were both racers, if you were wondering.

It didn't really bother me that I was as into racing as I was, considering that my parents died in the act. A lot of people don't understand my obsession and the only one who ever understood or supported me was Ai, my aunt and guardian.

"That again?" Ai asked and pulled me into a hug. I fell over and landed face-first into her bountiful cleavage. This was a usual ritual for her, though, so I relaxed and allowed her to half suffocate me with her giant breasts until she laughed and released me. "Now that you're finally eighteen, Kou-chan, what do you plan to do with your life?" Ai stood and pulled me off of the bed with her. While I ascended I quickly closed my laptop and then followed her out of the room and down the passage and into the bar.

Ai owned her own bar that also happened to have a house in the other half of it, which is where we lived and where she had raised me.

"You know that I want to race." I answered her earlier question and took a seat at one of the bar stools.

Ai pursed her lips for a moment and then placed a glass of beer in front of me. "Where would you like to race?" she asked inquisitively and turned around to fix the bottles of alcohol that had been misplaced the day before.

I looked at the clock on the wall and noted that it was quite early, 7 a.m. "There's this place, and I know you told me not to even think about it but… Ai, I really want to race in Shatter Bay."

Ai froze. "Kousoku." When she said my full name and in that voice, I knew I was in for a long, gruelling speech.

I sighed. "Listen, Ai, I know you told me that it's too dangerous, but I want to go there."

"Why do you need to go there of all places so desperately?" Ai had turned around and now she stood in front of me, hands spread out on the counter, eyes hard and strict. I flinched slightly at the anger in her eyes.

"I don't know… it just calls to me. I dream about that place and I long to at least see what the racing there is like."

Ai shook her head vehemently. "Kou, I've supported you since you voiced your interest in racing, but a girl like you wouldn't last a week in a place like that. You will get killed before you even learn how to drive."

I looked down at my hands folded on top of the table on sighed again. "We don't know that, though, because you won't let me try."

"If I let you try then you'll only end up like them!" Ai shouted and then covered her mouth with her hand. I looked at her with concern.

"Ai, I know the risks. I know that I could die just like my parents did in one of those dangerous races, but I don't know if or when I could if I don't even try. For all we know I might even end up hating the place and return here to work with you in the bar." Ai came around the bar and stopped beside me. "I won't be reckless. I've read up on safe racing as much as possible. We can't know that I will fail if I don't even try to win." She pulled me into a hug and rested her cheek on the top of my head.

"I can't lose you Kou-chan, you're all the family I have now. I'm sorry for getting so upset, but you have to understand the reasons why."

"And I do." I gave her hip a gentle pat. "Now stop being so anxious about this, alright?" I reached out and took the glass that had been neglected, and lifted the beer to my lips.

I had never drank alcohol before and I had never known the horrible bitterness of beer until that very first sip, causing me to swiftly return the glass to the counter and cough after I had almost sprayed the liquid all over the place, but had managed to swallow it all down, albeit a bit hazardously.

"You're just like your father. He could never handle any form of alcohol either." Ai gave me a few comforting pats on the back and then resorted to rubbing in circles until I got my coughing and wheezing under control and could finally breathe again.

"Holy shit, that was terrible! Warn me next time!" I wiped my mouth and sent a chuckling Ai a glare.

"Hey, watch your language missy. You may be eighteen now but you will always be eight in my eyes."

I bowed my head in shame. Totally forgot to censor my language there. "Sorry, Ai." She chuckled and gave my head a pat, and then proceeded to clean the counter since I had made a slight mess with the beer despite my best efforts not to. Damn stuff was terrible. "Do you need my help today?"

"Nah, I can handle the bar on my own for today. You go out and have fun with your friends for today."

"You mean 'friend', singular." I retorted.

Ai rolled her eyes. "If you tried you could have hundreds of friends."

"And have hundreds of more things to get annoyed over. Having one friend is stressful enough!" Ai simply shook her head and went to turn the sign over to 'open' by the door.

"Be safe and don't stay out too long." Ai passed by me and gave me a motherly kiss on the forehead. I smiled and gave her a salute.

"Yes ma'am!" I jumped off my chair, collected my laptop and cellphone from my room, and then hurried out of the bar. On my way out of the door I bumped into an elderly man. He had a long grey beard with absolutely no hair on his head. He also had really bushy eyebrows, which I almost always found hard not to stare at.

"Ah, Kou-chan, off to bother Kai again?" He righted me, since I had bounced off of his potbelly, and gave my head a pat. It was weird, because I was taller than him even though he was like a thousand years older than me.

"That I am, Hanji-san. I'm glad you're here so early though to keep Ai some company until it gets busier."

Mr Hanji chuckled and gave his protruding stomach a loving pat. He looked weird and often said the weirdest things that I never understood but he was kind and thoughtful, and would always stand by our side. He was one of the many supporters that my aunt had ever since she had lost her sister and brother-in-law and had accepted custody of me. I had grown up around a very select group of the weird and wonderful.

"It is always a pleasure to share words with that aunt of yours. Now scamper off already, you seem constipated with that impatient look on your face."

I laughed loudly at his choice of words and waved over my shoulder as I ran off down the road. My best friend and partner in crime, Shiori Kai, lived a few blocks down from where I lived. It only took me a few minutes to run there and when I arrived I took a moment to catch my breath and then walked around the house to her bedroom window. I knocked three times and waited. Only two breaths passed, in which I took the time to quickly fix my hair. I must have some awesome genes, as Ai often tells me, because the crown of my hair is scarlet red, the rest is black and then my tips are the same red. A lot of people think I dye it or something to look cool, but I swear, my hair grew out like this on its own. While I grinned at my train of thought I looked into my own, weirdly golden eyes – again, I got some major genes – and then the curtains were ripped back and Kai glared at me from the other side of the window.

"What the hell, Kou, it's like 7 in the morning?" She exclaimed and opened the window.

"I know," I said and climbed in. It had no bars and was large enough for even my long body to crawl through. I would have used the front door but Kai's mother was sleeping and I didn't want to risk waking her. The woman worked 3 jobs just to support herself and Kai.

Once inside I swept my eyes over the messy, slightly smelly, cluttered and dark room that Kai wasted away in. I noticed that she had her TV on with a beanbag in front of it and her xbox playing. She had been gaming all this time.

"Why do you care what time it is anyway, you haven't even slept have you?"

Kai sighed and ran a hand through her shoulder length black hair. I straightened to my full height and stared down at her with my hands on my hips. Kai is only an inch shorter than me, but right now she was hunched over from hours of gaming and looked like she had about 30 bags under her eyes.

I found the second beanbag that probably belonged to me by now and shuffled it over to the TV and then plopped down on top of it.

"I couldn't help it, Kou, this guy kept antagonizing me online for having a vagina so I challenged him to a race to show him that gender doesn't matter when it comes to gaming."

"And?"

Kai plopped down on her own beanbag beside me and snatched a bag of chips from the floor. Her hand disappeared inside of the packet for a moment and then she pulled it out with a bunch of chips in hand and placed them in her mouth. After a moment of crunching and chewing, she swallowed and offered the bag to me.

"I won and he asked for a rematch like 10 times. I won each time and eventually the moron realized he wouldn't beat me no matter how many times he raced me again."

I took the bag with an appreciative nod and chuckled. "What a prick."

"Yeah." Kai yawned and then gave me her famous smirk that lit her green eyes up like nothing other than gaming could. It was that smile that had gotten her constant confessions at school – all from girls, might I add. Oh, and another thing about my dear friend is that she is unhealthily obsessed with gaming, as you have probably guessed.

We get along so well because of our mutual love for racing. But we differ in that she is crazy over virtual racing and I am crazy over real racing. I doubt we would have had any friends at all if we hadn't stumbled upon each other when we were kids.

"But then his group of buddies decided to take revenge for him, it seemed like he was at a LAN, and they all challenged me."

"Ouch." I said, knowing where this was going.

"Yeah. I accepted each challenge and won every one of them. I just completed my last race though." Kai yawned and stretched out across the beanbag, and then deflated and just lay there, half hanging onto the floor. She was probably too tired to move.

"Before you fall asleep mid-air like that, I found a new video." That gave Kai a new bout of energy and she quickly lifted her body and scooted closer to me.

"Oooh?"

I pulled my laptop out of its bag and opened it. I clicked on a button and waited for the device to 'wake up' and show my desktop. Once it had done that and we were staring at my wallpaper that consisted of a collage of racing cars, I clicked on my browser and opened a link I had saved in my bookmarks. It loaded for a moment and then the page loaded.

"By the way, your internet seems faster than usual." I commented as I scrolled down for the article of my desire.

Kai nodded. "I got it upgraded."

"Where did you get the money for that?"

"I got a bonus from work and my mother helped me out a bit."

As I mentioned earlier, Kai's mother worked hard just to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. There was no way she could keep up with her daughter's obsession, so she had to resort to buying food and rent instead of a game or hardware upgrades. This made Kai miserable though, so she went out and got a job for herself. It didn't pay that much and just barely managed to keep her gaming alive each month, but it was good enough.

"Okay, here it is." I clicked on the video and turned the volume up as it started to play.

"A domination race?" Kai asked while she had her eyes riveted to the racing going on in the video.

I nodded enthusiastically. "It's really hard to find these videos, since the activity the Unbounded do isn't all that legal, but I've gotten good at locating their stuff. Their leader Kara, likes to record their races and events and keeps it online, but heavily guarded and hidden. Only those that are purposefully seeking their information will find it." The car in 3rd place drifted around the corner and then accelerated into the 2nd driver, sending them both into the wall. They crashed and tumbled into the building and eventually their cars stopped moving.

"Damn, it's as wild as ever." Kai commented.

"This race is especially important because it's the race that decides the racer that will get to race for Unbounded in the upcoming event."

"So all of these guys are on the same team, but are racing against each other right now?"

I nodded and grinned. "And Shindo Kara is observing this race with extra attention." We continued to watch until the racer that had been moved to 2nd place after the previous two cars crashed passed by the car in 1st and won the race by seconds.

"Damn, that was brilliant. What event is this though?"

I had to suppress my urge to uncharacteristically squeal like a fan-girl and simply grinned like an idiot. Kai knew I was holding back though, and draped an arm around my shoulder as she flashed a knowing grin of her own.

"It's a Territory Battle. A racer from each gang from different cities will race for the ownership of a district in Shatter Bay. At the moment The Unbounded have control over all of the districts but the other gangs want in. To prevent an all-out war, Kara came up with a way of solving all of her problems while making a profit at the same time."

"That is brilliant."

I beamed. "It is."

"When is this Territory Battle taking place though?"

"In 2 days." I shut my laptop and slipped it back into my bag, and then I slumped pathetically into the beanbag and pouted. "I really want to go but asking Ai to take me is completely useless. You know how she feels about anything concerning Shatter Bay."

Kai thought silently for a moment and then suddenly shook me by the shoulders. "Kou! If you come here early tomorrow morning then I can take you with my mother's car."

"Won't she be working?"

Kai shook her head. "Strangely she's off tomorrow, but we need to leave early so that even if I come back when she's awake you'll already be there."

I thought about it for a time of 0.1 seconds before I tackled Kai to the floor and gave her a giant bear hug.

"Oh my God, Kai. Marry me!" I exclaimed and laughed.

"Geez, you're sexy and all, Kou, but it would be like marrying myself. So, no, but I'll still cart you off to Shatter Bay to watch that race."

I laughed again and returned to the beanbag. We both curled up on our spots and grabbed an xbox remote.

"Wanna race?" I asked.

Kai didn't need to think about it at all as she left the world of the internet and started a multiplayer game between her and me. "You're on." She said, and I knew the moment her face fell into determination that I would lose by far, but I played anyway.

Kai could be scary when she was serious. No scratch that, she wasn't actually playing me seriously, so she's pretty much scary whenever it comes to gaming in general.

When we had gamed long enough that Kai had fallen asleep in the middle of the race, I stopped the game and put my friend into her bed. She snored softly after I placed her under the blanket, but seemed to just fall into deeper sleep.

After pulling my bag onto my back I exited through the front door, bumping into Kai's mother and giving her a big hug to say hello, and then I leisurely walked back to Ai's bar. As I walked I thought, and realized that this was my chance.

I wanted to race as a profession, but I wanted to race as The Unbounded. Ai could argue with me as much as she wanted, it would never change my mind. It was probably safe to guess that the second I stepped into Shatter Bay, I would never leave.

Could I just pack a bag and move there, though, with little money and nowhere to go? I guess I could play it by ear and see how it goes. If things got out of hand I'm sure I could call either Kai or Ai – if she isn't too upset with me for leaving – to either help me out with money or to fetch me.

This was my ultimate chance, and after thinking it over along the walk back and even long after I had gotten home and ventured back into my room, my resolve to do it strengthened.

Before making any permanent decisions, though, I decided that I would go there to watch the Territory Battle, and then if I felt I belonged I would stay. This was probably way too hasty of me, since I didn't even have a car or a licence and this was probably a product of my adolescent youth and optimistic outlook. But I didn't care.

I wanted to race damnit, and I wanted to race in Shatter Bay where only the best ever raced. I would know, because my parents had both worked and died in that city, and it was even where I had been conceived and born. Shatter Bay was my home, it was in my blood, and now I was determined to go there no matter what. Consequences be damned.

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Extra Note: Well I'll be damned, you made it to the end. Thank you T-T really. Lol, anyway, so as you've noticed everyone other than Ai are OC characters of mine. That territory fight thing is also my creation, but it seems possible. This isn't very long and I just wanted the readers to get a feel of the main character before she's thrust into the world of The Unbounded and such. So, I hope you liked it as much as I do. Again, thank you.


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